


Cataclysm

by mahoni



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Animal Transformation, Canon Related, Crack, Friendship, Gen, Kittens, Post-Split, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-03
Updated: 2010-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-08 17:05:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahoni/pseuds/mahoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian is there for his friends. Even when one of them is a kitten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cataclysm

**Author's Note:**

> Post-MCR fic.

"You have to come pick me up."

"Bob?" Brian said.

"Brian, you have to come pick me up." Bob's voice sounded shaky and thin over the phone. "It's done, everything's done, everything's signed, everything's moved out, but, crap. I can't. You gotta come get me, man, shit."

"Wait." Brian was already shoving his feet into shoes and making flaily 'be right back' gestures at his wife, because of course he was going. But a little more information would be nice. "What's going on? Where are you?"

"Downtown, a few blocks from my lawyer's office. I pulled into the Best Buy parking lot -- my spare key, it's in a magnetic thing under the front of the car, just back of the bumper, you're going to need it."

Grabbing his keys from the bowl by the door Brian headed for his car. "Why am I going to need your spare key?"

"Because I can't fucking leave my car unlocked, dumbass," Bob hissed. "And I won't be able to unlock it for you when you --"

He broke off with a sucked-in breath, followed by a muffled squeak and the clatter of his phone knocking against things as it fell. Then there was silence.

Brian took a breath to start yelling, because the silence was scary after how lost and miserable Bob had sounded. But then things started clicking into place.

Couple blocks from the lawyer, everything signed, moved, done.

He and Bob had been talking about things as they happened, but not necessarily about all of the specifics, and Bob hadn't given him dates. But apparently today was the day when Bob became, officially, unemployed.

For a second Brian sat in his car. His stomach twisted, a familiar flare of anger and frustration and disbelief -- but mostly anger -- blooming in his chest.

"Fucking motherfucking fuck," he said, because really, there wasn't a whole lot else to say about it.

Then he jammed the key into the ignition and peeled out of his driveway. Brian was pretty sure he knew what had happened and that Bob was okay, but damned if he was going to take any chances.

*

He found Bob's SUV in the parking lot. There was a U-Haul hitched to the back, and Brian guessed Bob had intended to take off for Chicago immediately after the final meeting with the lawyer. Brian knew Bob had been planning the move; the dogs were already back home, with Bob's folks.

A glance through the SUV windows showed nothing but boxes and clothes in the back, and empty Red Bull cans, fast food trash and a few random drumsticks in the front. No dead body or anything along those lines. Brian blew out a relieved breath.

"Thanks for scaring me to fucking death, dickhead," he muttered as he knelt in front of the car and groped for the hidden key holder.

At first when he opened the driver's side door, nothing happened.

"Bob," Brian said. "You in there?"

There was a pause, and then a rustling. Brian slid into the driver's seat and closed the door, and watched the kitten squeeze out from beneath the passenger seat.

It wasn't the sort of thing that happened automatically every single time Bob got upset, and he hid it pretty well. Bob really was a pretty badass, take no shit motherfucker, and he generally dealt with things just fine as a human guy. When he couldn't deal, though, and needed some kitten time to help him decompress, he always found ways to do it on his own. Nobody knew, except Bob's family (obviously, since it was genetic) and Brian.

The fact that Brian knew about it was a fluke, and a recent development. He'd dropped in on Bob unannounced a couple of days before Bob's surgery, because he knew Bob was depressed and worried about how the surgery would go and he wanted to cheer Bob up. The surprise visit turned out to be just as much of a surprise for Brian as it was for Bob, though. Seeing a startled kitten magically shift from tiny fuzzball on Bob's bed to Bob in ratty jeans and ugly hoodie falling off the bed: hell of a surprise.

The kitten -- Bob -- gave itself a shake, and then plopped its little butt down on a discarded burger wrapper. It didn't look at Brian, staring at the air in the general vicinity of the gear shift instead.

Brian took a moment to boggle. This was only the second time he'd seen Bob as a kitten and it was truly, fantastically bizarre. Brian felt certain it would never _not_ be bizarre. Because firstly, who did that? Who turned into a kitten when they were sad?

And secondly, Bob. As a kitten. Bob insisted shapeshifters were more common than anyone knew and were in fact the world's best kept secret, but still.

Brian sighed, reached down and scooped Bob up.

There was nothing to Bob when he was like this -- he was all silky, fluffy fur and big blue eyes and huge ears and a tiny round belly. He fit in Brian's cupped hands with room to spare. Brian held him up and looked at him. Bob looked back, all the heartbreak and exhaustion of the last couple months in his eyes.

It was really sad, but still, _Bob was a kitten_. Brian couldn't help it; he felt his lips quiver, and his eyes started watering from the effort to not laugh.

Bob's ears flicked back briefly and his teeny claws pricked Brian's hands.

"I know, I know. I'm sorry," Brian said. "It's just a little hard to take your trauma completely seriously when you're a fucking kitten."

He tucked Bob against his chest and stroked a hand gently over the tiny kitten head. After a few quiet moments, Bob went limp, slumping listlessly into the crook of Brian's arm.

"I know," Brian said again. He didn't feel like laughing anymore.

*

According to Bob, whenever something so emotionally distressing happened that he couldn't stop himself from shifting, he generally got control back in a few hours. But when Brian got up the morning after rescuing Bob from the Best Buy parking lot there was a kitten sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. Bob still looked sad, but also slightly chagrined.

Brian just gave him a noogie and said, "Hey man, take all the time you need."

*

So, they had a kitten for a while.

Bob's parents were not surprised when Brian called to let them know why Bob would not be returning to Chicago for a bit. Brian still felt like an idiot telling them, though.

"Bob is having trouble de-kitten-fying." Who _says_ shit like that?

Himself, apparently.

*

The wife didn't mind having a kitten around, which was good, though Brian could tell that she didn't believe it was actually Bob. She went along with it, though. Because she was that fucking awesome and Brian was that fucking lucky of a guy.

The best thing about her not believing it was Bob was that she was constantly trying to play with him, and sometimes the swishy pieces of string and rustly crumpled balls of paper were just too much for Bob to resist. Brian took videos on his cell phone and emailed them to Bob's parents.

Bob was probably going to kill him later, but Brian felt it was worth the risk.

*

Brian couldn't entirely afford it, but he knew Bob could pay him back, so when the idiot neighbor abruptly moved out next door Brian called the realtor and leased the place for Bob.

He emptied the U-Haul and moved all of Bob's crap in, and even had a drummer friend come over and set up Bob's kit in the basement.

Then he moved Bob in.

"Not that we don't love having you around," Brian said as Bob scouted the living room, sniffing the boxes, the carpet, the TV and Xbox that Brian had gone ahead and hooked up.

Bob's tail was doing that thing that all tiny kittens' tails did, where it stuck up in the air straight and ridiculously pointy. Between that and the massive amounts of poofed-out pale fur, Bob looked like he'd stuck a paw in an electrical socket.

Brian looked at the ceiling and bit the inside of his cheek to make himself not laugh.

"Right, no, but since you spend most of your time in the spare room closet anyway I was thinking you might like some privacy."

Bob stopped at the hallway entrance and turned to look at Brian. He looked unbelievably small in the big, empty room. Brian wondered if Bob felt that small, too.

"I'll make sure you have food and stuff, and check in a couple times a day. You should be okay here alone."

Brian gave Bob a chance to indicate somehow that he disagreed. But Bob just turned away and vanished down the hallway.

"That's what I thought," Brian said to the air, and let himself out.

*

It was ten o'clock in the fucking morning. Yes, most people on Brian's block were at their various boring daytime jobs, including his lovely wife, but he was not in the boring-daytime-job business. He was trying to get some sleep.

Key word there was 'trying.'

Fumbling for his phone, Brian hit speed-dial. A couple seconds later the racket stopped; Brian figured Bob must have had his phone in his pocket on vibrate.

"Schechter," Bob said.

Human language, human voice. Brian threw his arms up victoriously and mouthed "thank fucking god" at the ceiling, then brought the phone back to his ear.

"You sound like you're in my fucking driveway, you dick," he said.

"Really? Sorry about that." There was the tap-tap-tap of a snare and the muffled thump of the kick drum, because Bob was physically incapable of sitting behind a drum kit and _not_ making noise on it, even if he was talking on the phone at the same time. "I guess I'll have to sound proof the basement if I stay."

Brian scrubbed a hand over his face and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. "You owe me closing fees and the first month's payment, by the way."

"I figured," Bob said. "Just let me know how much. Hey, I'm allowed to have pets, right?"

"Yes," Brian said. "Dogs. Cats. Kittens, even."

Bob snorted, rattling off a snare-roll and cymbal-crash.

"Yeah," Bob said. "Um. Thanks for that whole...uh. Picking me up. And stuff. Did you call my folks? They were expecting me to drive up. After the, after the thing."

"I called them, and it was the single weirdest phone call I've ever made, by the way"

Brian dropped his hand to lie on his chest and picked at where the old screen-print design was cracking. He assumed that Bob being human again was a good sign, but nobody got over life-changing upheavals after just a couple of weeks. Even if they spent the weeks as a kitten. "Hey. So. You okay?"

That got him silence and the soft tick-tick-tick that he knew was Bob knocking his drumsticks together and not being okay in the slightest.

The thought crossed Brian's mind that maybe he should have waited a while to ask that question. He couldn't be sure, but he didn't think it would be good for Bob to go all kitteny again so soon.

Also, Brian was getting tired of changing Bob's litter box.

"I need furniture," Bob said finally. "Especially a bed. I don't really fit on that wadded-up towel anymore."

"Okay," Brian said. "Give me a sec to wake up and get some coffee, and we can go shopping."

"Cool. Just come over. I'm ready whenever."

Bob didn't sound in danger of re-kittenizing, so Brian let it go and signed off the call.

He draped his arm over his face, blocking out the sunlight trying to squeeze in around the heavy curtains. Just as he started to drift off again, he was shocked awake by Swedish death metal. Just the drum parts. Loud enough to sound like it was being played in his driveway.

"Fucker," he muttered. He keyed 'like u better when u r cat' into a text, sent it, and rolled out of bed.

***

Addendum

If there were pictures, there would totally be lolcats. For example:

[](http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/03/23/funny-pictures-got-here/)  
see more [Lolcats and funny pictures](http://icanhascheezburger.com)

[](http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/01/12/im-in-ur-basketz-cuddlin-ur-bearz/)  
see more [Lolcats and funny pictures](http://icanhascheezburger.com)

[](http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/03/30/funny-pictures-teh-wyne-list/)  
see more [Lolcats and funny pictures](http://icanhascheezburger.com)

[](http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/03/18/funny-pictures-career-choice/)  
see more [Lolcats and funny pictures](http://icanhascheezburger.com)

[](http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/01/28/dude-4/)  
see more [Lolcats and funny pictures](http://icanhascheezburger.com)

[](http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/03/13/funny-pictures-for-my-doomsday-device/)  
see more [Lolcats and funny pictures](http://icanhascheezburger.com)


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